


A THOUSAND WAYS TO SPEND YOUR LAST NIGHT ON EARTH

by zoophobic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emetophobia, Gen, michael and lucifer are the main characters... raphael and gabriel are really important too, oh lowkey child neglect implied., team free will n some other angels show up, this is HEAVY canon divergence. make no mistake, yeah.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:01:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14530137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoophobic/pseuds/zoophobic
Summary: (alternatively titled, "you scream your lungs out and with the remnants of your throat you scream some more")At the beginning, it's Michael and a planet.At the end, it's Lucifer and a cage.





	A THOUSAND WAYS TO SPEND YOUR LAST NIGHT ON EARTH

**Author's Note:**

> laaawl i wrote this like months ago and decided to publish it in one thing today  
> uhh. like i said. HEAVY canon divergence. like, i change a lot of stuff. i like canon divergence. i like writing about what the archangels could've been. this is pure self indulgence. yeah.  
> warnings for emeto (michael... U Knows a couple times), mild blood (nicks rotting, bro!), and ... implications of trauma shit. its really brief.

 

    Michael is the first.

 

    He is revived unto a world that is dry, hard, all rock and dust and clear,  _ clear  _ blue as far as the eye can see. The world before it is anything at all, before life digs its claws in and clings on to the Earth for dear life. The atmosphere is thin, and Michael can look up at the sun (it is so distant and so close he feels he can reach it, can feel it burning the wax on his wings) until his eyes burn and his Father can turn him away from the star.

 

    “You mustn’t look at the sun,” his Father says, quietly, gently, calmly. He leads Michael away while he hums a tune, something soft and melodic that will stick with Michael until the universe collapses back in on itself.

 

    “What’s that?” Michael asks as the hum slips away, replaced by his Father’s persistent contemplation.

 

    “I’m not sure yet, Micah.” Michael watches his Father’s face carefully. “I suppose we’ll figure it out, hm?”

 

+

 

    They get dragged out of the Cage.

 

    Sam Winchester is long,  _ long  _ gone when it happens -- probably with a fucking  _ apology _ , Lucifer thinks. But they get dragged out, too, picked up by the scruffs of their necks like mewling kittens astray from the litter and dropped into a place in Arizona. It is horrible, and if Lucifer spends the first several hours there suffocating in his returned vessel, he does not mention such to Michael.

 

    Not that Michael would understand it. Michael is laying on the ground, staring at the sky with unfocused eyes. He’s still possessing Adam Milligan, who is all tired eyes and gaping frowns and who fits Michael like a glove made for a hand that is not your own.

 

    Lucifer stops choking after a while, and then he sits in the desert and watches the rubber soles of his shoes stain orange-red. After a few hours (they could pass in a blink of an eye for any angel who isn’t him, who didn’t spend millenia trapped in a cage because they  _ dared  _ to rebel), he decides he’s spent enough time sitting pretty and tries to get up. He stumbles, hits the ground chin-first, and yells at the sky for it.

 

    The sky does not answer. It is wide and blue and desperately yawning and Lucifer wants nothing more than to give it a piece of his mind.

 

    When he manages to stand upright, he makes his way towards Michael, who’s only movement in the hours they’d been there had been to close his eyes.

 

    “ _ Absolutely _ fucking not, Michael,” Lucifer spits, and he drags his brother to his feet.

 

+

 

    His Father shows him the planet, and it is despairing.

 

    Michael remembers, vaguely, a battle.

 

    Instead of thinking about it further, he stares out into the open ocean, watches it hit the rock until it carves a path through it, and then he turns around to his Father who gazes back with a sad smile.

 

    “Come along, Micah,” his Father tells him, and waves a hand, “We’ll make something grand.”

 

+

 

    Michael mutters words Lucifer can’t hear.

 

    He’s holed them up into an abandoned car with it’s windows blown out, where Michael is curled up on the floorboard of the backseat and talking to himself.

 

    “For our Father’s sake, Michael,  _ shut up _ ,” he snaps, but Michael does nothing to indicate the words even register to him. He just continues to stare vacantly at the opposite door and mumble, and finally Lucifer turns away from him to watch the sun set outside.

 

    It is envious, Earth’s sunset; all streaks of color across the sky, melting into each other until it creates what he imagines the only good painting would look like. Lucifer supposes that when he was young, he might have enjoyed it. Might have watched it every time he could, might have endlessly chased the setting sun around the planet. But he is grown, now, and he knows containment, and everything feels daunting.

 

    He wants to rip it all into shreds and let it begin anew.

 

+

 

    They build Heaven, first.

 

    It starts in the clouds, which Michael would hardly dare to reach without his Father’s say-so, with the floors, and when his Father looks around at it, he is disgusted.

 

    “What’s wrong?” Michael asks, and he follows his Father’s gaze around the base.

 

    “This is.” He pauses, and then sighs. “I’m going to try again.”

 

    “May I help?”

 

    “Go back to Earth, Michael,” his Father tells him, and there is no force in his voice, nothing to suggest it’s a command, but Michael understands.

 

    Michael  _ is _ , has always  _ been _ , will always  _ be  _ his Father’s son.

 

+

 

    They don’t sleep.

 

   Michael stares at the door opposite him, and if Lucifer cared enough about sleep and useless human functions of the sort to want to sleep sitting up in a car in the desert in a vessel that he was rotting from the inside out, he wouldn’t be able to anyway, precisely because of that stare. The moonlight casts a careful sort of shadow across Michael’s face, makes it painful to see how empty, how unaware of everything he looks.

 

    “We deserve better than this, you know,” Lucifer says, “We helped him for so long and what does he do for us but let us get thrown into a  _ cage  _ because it was our fucking  _ destiny _ ?”

 

    Michael stares at the door. His hands are folded neatly on top of his knees. Some things, Lucifer notes, do not change.

 

   When Michael fails to provide any sort of response, Lucifer shudders and looks away.

 

+

 

    Michael does not get to help with the making of Heaven again.

 

    His Father spends all of his time away, working on this perfect haven, and again and again Michael will see him standing at the shore, and when Michael wades through the water back to him, he will simply offer his son a tired grin and say, “I have to get back to work now, Micah.”

 

    “Okay, Father,” Michael says, and then his Father is gone, and Michael takes a seat on the shore to let the ocean lap against his legs.

 

+

 

    They sit through the night, and when day breaks, as it tends to do, Lucifer shifts in the front seat. He brushes a hand against his forehead in exhaustion and when he sees it’s slightly bloody, he pretends he doesn’t.

 

    “C’mon, Michael,” Lucifer says, and he steps out of the car and into the sun.

 

+

 

    Michael is laying in a canyon where the water carved out the rock and then receded, and his eyelids are beginning feel  _ heavy _ , and then his Father approaches.

 

    “I have something to show you, Micah,” he says, and there is a glee in his voice that Michael has never heard before. The sheer excitement, interrupting his Father’s usual quiet thought, is enough to startle Michael upright, and then he’s standing beside his Father.

 

    “What is it?” Michael asks, but he shakes his head, waves a hand dismissively.

 

    “Come along and see.”

 

    And so Michael follows, follows him all the way to Heaven, and there in the center of his Father’s rebuilt again-and-again creation, there is something (some _ one _ ) new and familiar all at once.

 

+

 

    Lucifer takes the two of them into the nearest town.

 

    He has to hold Michael up, one hand clutching his brother’s waist to keep him upright and the other locked like a manacle around the arm Lucifer had slung over his shoulder. It looks stupid, and Lucifer has to grit his teeth to keep himself from starting to yell, but it’s the only way Michael will dare to move his feet.

 

    This is how he gets into the first hotel he sees, practically dragging Michael, using his shoulder to hold the door open.

 

    The receptionist looks up from her phone call, sees the two of them, and immediately her face loses all color. She stammers something into the phone and drops it, and then asks, cautiously, “Are you two okay?”

 

    “Yeah, just dandy,” Lucifer retorts, and promptly lets go of Michael.

 

    In the time it takes Michael to slump to the floor in a daze, the Devil himself has sent every patron and worker in the hotel lobby to sleep. There’s a resounding thud as everyone but Lucifer hits the nearest flat surface.

 

    Lucifer slips behind the desk, grabs the first key for a first floor room he sees, and then begins the monumental struggle of getting Michael back to his feet so he can lead him to room 136.

 

+

 

    Michael loves his brother.

 

    He decides, then, standing in Heaven, that he will never not love his brother, that he will never do anything to harm his brother, that he will always protect his brother.

 

    His Father seems pleased with this, and so it is then perhaps the only good decision Michael will ever make.

 

+

 

    The instant Lucifer manages to wrestle the room’s door open, he deposits Michael on the bed nearest the door and heads for the bathroom. He punches the lights on, and then stares at himself in the mirror for what would feel like a second to any angel but him.

 

    His vessel’s face is essentially peeling -- grotesque red splotches are littering his chin and right cheek, and when he digs his nails into them, he can feel the body decaying. This vessel was not made for him. It might have been able to hold another angel, but he was an archangel, a fallen angel, the fucking  _ Morning Star _ . He is the body’s rot, and for a moment, he mistakes that feeling in his gut for some sort of guilt rather than his standard hatred for humanity.

 

    Lucifer scratches at one of the marks, and gazes absently at the blood that comes back with it.

 

+

 

    Lucifer laughs. He cries. He stares at the sun until his eyes water, takes in the heat of that burning star and smiles.

 

    And their Father smiles right back.

 

    He does not tell Lucifer off, merely laughs with him, wipes tears from his face, looks at the sun with him.

 

    Michael stands in the ocean with the waves lapping against his legs, feels the spray of water against his face, and pretends not to notice the dismayed feeling worming its way through his gut like a parasite.

 

+

 

    They’re barely in the room for an hour before Michael leans over and retches on the bedsheets in front of him.

 

    Lucifer throws open the bathroom door with a loud slam when he hears the noise, a momentary instant of something like panic or fear having struck him before he remembers the source, and then he turns the corner to face his brother.

 

    Michael’s leaning over the pool, a dribble of vomit still hanging from his chin, and wavering as though he’s going to fall face-first into it at any moment. Lucifer is mostly concerned with the fact that they had not eaten anything, therefore the vomit seems to be nothing but bile and blood. He wrinkles his nose at the sight, and then moves quickly to grab Michael’s shoulder and pull him away. Michael sways for a moment, and then in a series of jerky motions, swings his legs off the bed and crumples against the wall in the slit of space between it and the bed.

 

     Lucifer doesn’t know what to do. After staring between Michael and the soiled bed for a good few minutes, Lucifer finally steps over him and pulls him upright by gripping him under the arms and more or less picking him up. He carries Michael to the other bed, closest to the window, and drops him onto it, where Michael immediately curls into the fetal position.

 

    It’s pathetic, really.

 

    Lucifer should probably yank the sheets off the other bed before the vomit sinks through, but the longer he watches Michael stare at his own hands, the more infuriated he gets. His older brother used to be  _ powerful _ .

 

    Hell, he still is. Lucifer can feel his grace, fragmented, pulsating just beneath the surface. It has not failed to dawn upon him how easy it would be to kill Michael for good right here, take his grace. The grace of one archangel is powerful, but  _ two _ ? Lucifer could rival his Father. But something tells him not to, not yet, and so he doesn’t.

 

    But just because he does not want to kill Michael does not mean he does not want to yell at him until he’s back in his right mind.

 

    “What the fuck  _ happened  _ to you?” Lucifer starts, and then he’s pacing, back and forth in front of the beds. “If it’s the fucking Cage, Michael, I- I spent  _ millennia  _ there, you- you piece of  _ shit _ , and I’m not curled up on a human fucking bed in a human vessel staring at the fucking  _ wall _ , am I?!”

 

    He wants to say more, wants to shout until his lungs are empty, wants to scream until his throat is sore, but he makes the mistake of looking back at Michael. He is not looking at Lucifer. He doesn’t seem to be hearing anything at all.

 

    Lucifer slides into a sit against the wall, fingers twitching as he digs his nails into the sides of his face.

 

+

 

    “Michael,” Lucifer calls to him in a whisper, and though his head is momentarily flayed with visions of being yelled for in something much more deadly than this, Michael opens his eyes to see a dark sky. There’s a couple stars here and there, the closest ones, the only ones where the light can reach the still-growing universe. Michael sits up, runs a hand through the thin, grainy sand that is beginning to accumulate along the shore. He sees Lucifer standing some distance away, careful to avoid the water.

 

    “What is it, Lucifer?” Michael asks just above a breath. He doesn’t know why he’s playing along. Perhaps it’s for the smile that only grows on his brother’s face.

 

    “I’m going to show you the morning,” Lucifer answers quietly, eyes wild with a desperate sort of fascination.

 

    “I’ve seen the morning, Lucifer--”

 

    “Not like this,” Lucifer replies. “C’mon, big bro.”

 

    And so Michael follows him.

 

    Lucifer finds a spot along a cliff and sits, and Michael follows suit, and when the sun rises, it is just like every other sun rise Michael has ever seen. Still, Lucifer watches in wonder, stares directly at the sun as it pushes over the horizon, and  _ maybe  _ Michael is beginning to see the appeal in the morning light.

 

+

 

    Night falls outside their hotel room, and Lucifer can’t bear to be there a moment longer.

 

    He’d let the vomit soak through, let it permeate the sheets and the mattress until the whole room reeked vaguely acidic. And then, when the smell was getting overpowering, Lucifer slipped out of the room.

 

    He’d left the hotel through a back door, unwilling to encounter the lobby full of people he’d sent to sleep. There’s this vague hope lingering in the back of his mind that Michael will do something in his absence, maybe freak out when ( _ if _ ) he realizes he’s been left alone and blow the hotel to bits in a brief flash of his old power. How Lucifer would  _ love  _ to come back to that. How he’d love to come back to anything even suggesting some shred of Michael was left.

 

    But Lucifer leaves, makes his way through the city. It’s a small place. Lucifer briefly considers trying to learn the name and where exactly it is, but then thinks,  _ Fuck it, who cares _ , and forgets the matter entirely.

 

    He finds that people on the street are looking at him. Staring, even, but  _ discreetly _ , in that way that suggests there is definitely  _ something  _ wrong, but human niceties or some bullshit like that are preventing them from saying it. 

 

    Lucifer enjoys making heads turn. He revels in these stares.

 

+

 

    Michael likes the sea, likes it when it eats away at the hard rock, likes the cold water, likes submerging himself and watching bubbles drift to the top of the water until he too breaks the surface.

 

    He comes to discover that he likes watching the sun rise and set over the ocean, too -- likes the way light scatters across the wave, likes the dimensions it adds to the surface, likes diving beneath the water then and coming up feeling changed. 

 

    There’s just  _ something  _ about going under while it’s day and coming up while it’s night that feels  _ right _ .

 

+

 

    When Lucifer returns to the hotel about three hours later, Michael is not on the bed.

 

    He hears water running in the bathroom. When Lucifer opens the door, Michael is sitting, fully-clothed, in the shower, water running, curtain pulled back so water is spraying all over the floor.

 

    Lucifer silently thanks Michael for being immobile enough to render them to a bottom level floor, and then wades through the puddle beside the shower. He reaches in to turn the water off, and then yanks his hand out the instant he makes contact with the water. It’s freezing cold, so much so that Michael’s shiver suddenly makes sense.

 

    Lucifer takes in a deep breath, and tries again.

 

    This time he merely turns on the hot water and then draws his hand back. He takes a seat on the closed toilet as the water heats, and when it’s spraying out lukewarm, Michael’s shoulders release their tension. He closes his eyes. He’s still completely out of it, but the temperature of water is registering, so Lucifer figures he can’t be that far gone.

 

    Lucifer is mostly angry knowing that relief is what comes to him first.

 

+

 

    Michael turns over on the shore, and his Father is sitting beside him.

 

    Michael yawns, sits upright. His Father is tilting his head at him, curiously, oh so curiously, like he suddenly doesn’t understand Michael after so long and has put him under a microscope in an effort to figure him out. Michael shifts uneasily.

 

    “Yes, Father?” he asks, unwilling to press but pressing regardless. His Father deflates. This is not the question he’d been hoping for.

 

    “Nothing, Micah,” he says, “It’s alright.”

 

    Michael nods. He lays back down and listens to his Father get up and walk away.

 

+

 

    When the hot water in the room runs out, Lucifer shuts off the water entirely, and leaves. He figures if Michael were able to drag himself in there, he could drag himself out. So Lucifer leaves, collapses into the sole chair in the room, when he hears the water turn back on.

 

    Lucifer reenters the bathroom, turns the faucet back off, and leaves again.

 

   It turns on again.

 

    After this has happened six times, Lucifer turns the water off, and then hoists his brother upright by the arms. His clothes are dripping wet at this point, and Lucifer would not, in all honesty, have been surprised if his vessel had gotten hypothermia or some human bullshit like that. He does, however, lift Michael as best he can, drag him to the bed closest the window, and drop him there. Michael shivers on top of the covers for a moment, and then he sits up, grapples with the sheets for a moment, and disappears into an angel-shaped lump beneath them.

 

    Lucifer sinks into a sit at the base of the bed, buries his face into his hands, and wipes the blood that comes back onto the knees of his jeans.

 

+

 

    “C’mon, big bro,” Lucifer says, and Michael looks from the sky to his brother.

 

    The younger angel is standing beside him, staring distastefully at the water. Michael does not understand his hatred of the open ocean, but he does his best to. Michael does not understand a lot about Lucifer, but he will always do his best to. He wonders if it was like this before. He wonders if it will be like this forever.

 

    “ _ C’mon _ , big bro,” Lucifer repeats, and Michael stands. Lucifer grabs Michael by the wrist, guides him over rocks, over hills, over cliffs, and when Lucifer trips, Michael trips with him, and when Lucifer stumbles, Michael stumbles with him.

 

+

 

    Lucifer slips into sleep. (An ex-angel can’t  _ always  _ be hyper-vigilant of whether or not they’re falling into human habits.)

 

   He wakes up to the sound of shuffling from the bed behind him, and jolts upright all at once. He’s back in himself the instant his eyes flicker open. Lucifer jumps to his feet, and turns, and Michael is merely shifting beneath the covers. There is nothing in the world that wants to hurt them.

 

    This isn’t true. Lucifer can think of plenty that would want to. More realistically, there is nothing in the world that knows they are there to hurt.

 

+

 

    They hit the ground hard.

 

    Michael bites his tongue, bites his lips, squeezes his eyes shut, all to keep from crying.

 

    Lucifer, on the other hand, begins to bawl.

 

    Michael opens his eyes and there are not enough hands or words in the world, in the  _ universe  _ to calm his brother down. He is trying to reach for him, using lilting words and a reassuring tone, but Lucifer is crying and yelling and clutching his elbows and knees and he is hurting Michael’s ears and Michael thinks he might cry, too, and then--

 

    And then their Father is there, and he is scooping Lucifer into his arms, rubbing circles into his back, murmuring words of comfort, and how  _ badly  _ Michael wants to be comforted, too. But Lucifer calms down, calms down enough that his wails have become sobs have become weak sniffles. Their Father takes him back to Heaven, leaves Michael there, and when he returns, the pain has dulled.

 

    “Are you alright, Michael?” his Father asks, and Michael considers the question.

 

    “Yes, Father.”

 

    “Good. I think I’m going to make something else, now. Would you like to see?”

 

   “Yes, Father.”

 

    “Come along then, Micah.”

 

+

 

    The next morning, Lucifer leaves again.

 

    Michael is still beneath the covers, shivering, always shivering, when Lucifer leaves.

 

    He wants to leave Michael there for good. But he doesn’t. It’s a weird feeling, that.

 

+

 

    The third to come back is Raphael, and with Raphael there is moss on the rocks, the beginnings of something other than them.

 

    Raphael is quiet, always quiet, but not because he has to be, because he  _ wants  _ to be. He is, by nature, the support, stepping in when Lucifer stares too long at the sun, when Michael stays under too long, when their Father works too long and cannot possibly stop of his own accord. Where Raphael steps, life follows, the promise of rebirth, of  _ betterment _ .

 

    Michael understands him more easily. He understands Raphael because Raphael tries to understand him, and they are two quiet, thoughtful souls, sitting at the water’s edge. But where Michael slips forward and floats upon the surface, Raphael turns around and ghosts a hand over the moss clinging to the closest rock’s surface and watches it grow beneath his palm.

 

    Michael knows, even then, that this brother is the closest he will ever get to a friend.

 

+

 

    Lucifer comes back to the hotel, and someone is there.

 

    They do not even get a chance to turn and face him before he waves his arm and slams them against the wall. It’s a quick, decisive movement, and when Lucifer sees who it is, he’s glad he acted quickly. The force is enough to shake the hotel, and the person grits their teeth and lets out a low groan, and that’s when Lucifer realizes who it is.

 

    “What the fuck are you doing here, Raph?”

 

    Raphael opens an eye, ghosts his hand over his stomach, and exhales. “Lucifer,” Raphael greets coolly, daring not to stand but to look Lucifer in the eye.

 

    “ _ Don’t _ fuck around. What are you doing here?”

 

    Raphael breathes out, then nods at Michael, still beneath the sheets, no longer shivering. “Every angel felt it. Only I could identify it, though. It took me a while to find the two of you, but I had to.”

 

    There it is. Lucifer hates  _ had to _ . “You didn’t  _ have  _ to do anything. You could’ve just sat pretty in Heaven and let me take care of it.”

 

    “You? The Devil himself?” Raphael barks out a laugh. It’s too pitched, too forced, but Lucifer admires the effort. His younger brother’s not much for a laugher, although the familiar biting snark is an unwelcome nostalgia trip. “I’m surprised you haven’t already ‘taken care of it’.” Raphael winces, loosens his tie. “You’ve got the power to, and he doesn’t seem to be in any state to resist.”

 

    Lucifer sits on the edge of the bed. Raphael has enough sense to stand up, assume a position of power over him. It does nothing. They both know who will come out on top if they fight. This is not a question. Lucifer says, “So you noticed.”

 

    “Of course I noticed,” he breathes out again, just as heavily. “I called his name and there was no reply. I figured it’d be worse.”

 

    “Worse?”

 

    “Dead-worse.” 

 

    Raphael is looking at him, eyes narrowed, head cocked ever-so-slightly to the left. He’s trying to figure out what Lucifer is playing at. Lucifer thinks, privately, that he’s forgotten the rules of the game. They both have. “What’d be the fun in that?”

 

    Raphael raises an eyebrow. “You  _ want  _ to fight?”

 

    Lucifer wants to answer no a million times over. It’d be so much easier to do it now, just get it out of the way. Instead, he says nothing. It’s enough of an answer for Raphael.

 

    “Oh,” he says, and then he’s gone.

 

+

 

    Michael knows that the end of all things will not be loud, or flashy, or obtrusive. It will be quiet. A shrinking. A collapse of something back in on itself, like carving into a mountainside, holding up your tunnel with wooden rods, and waiting until it eventually caves in. It is not the mountain’s fault, and it will not be the universe’s fault: it will not be anyone’s fault. Some things will just happen, and there is nothing to be done but enjoy the time you have until they do.

 

    So Michael knows the universe will not end with a bang.

 

    Sometimes, though, he looks at Lucifer, and thinks that it could.

 

+

 

    Raphael comes back the next day.

 

    Lucifer brews a pot of coffee in the hotel’s maker. It cools down fast and he pours cold tar into their cups. Raphael takes a sip and doesn’t even notice. Lucifer takes three and notices too much.

 

    “How’s Heaven holding up?” Lucifer asks, and Raphael closes his eyes. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed Lucifer had stripped too late, and Lucifer has pulled the hotel chair up to the end of Michael’s bed, and they are talking  _ at  _ each other without really talking  _ to  _ each other.

 

    “Not well,” Raphael answers. He sets the coffee cup on the side.

 

    “Heaven missing their  _ faithful  _ ruler?” Lucifer pointedly avoids using his name.

 

    They’re quiet for a moment.

 

    “Anyway--” Lucifer starts.

 

    “Castiel wanted to take over.”

 

    “Castiel?”

 

    Raphael nods, drops his head into his hands. “Castiel wanted to- he thought it’d be better. We… talked about it and, well, I  _ am  _ the last archangel left. Who else could it have been?”

 

    Lucifer doesn’t know what to say.

 

    “So I took the reins. Raphael, new ruler, leading the angels of Heaven.” Raphael pauses, shakes his head. “I’m not made for the role, brother.” If Raphael notices himself using the word, he doesn’t say it. “I’m not the…  _ Champion  _ of Heaven, not like Michael was.” His voice is almost accusatory.

 

    Lucifer takes a sip from his coffee. It goes down his throat like sludge.

 

    “I want him to wake up.”

 

    “Yeah,” Lucifer replies quietly.

 

+

 

    Michael wades into the water until his head is under and he’s staring at a diluted sky.

 

    He sees splotches of white, distorted by ripples, and reaches up. He knows clouds are heavy, and he thinks about what it would be like to touch one. When it comes time for him to resurface, he does so, and marches out of the water, right to his Father’s side.

 

    “What would it be like to touch a cloud, Father?”

 

    His Father shakes his head, doesn’t look away from watching Lucifer furiously scratch moss off a nearby bed of rock. “Why don’t you find out, Micah?”

 

    ( _ Oh _ , how Michael wants to.)

 

+

 

    Three minutes after Raphael vanishes, Michael claws himself off the bed, hands and knees on the hotel carpet, and vomits. There’s a pool of it on the floor, the same mixture of bloody bile Lucifer remembers from the first time. Lucifer heaves his brother upright, props him up against the nightstand, slicks back sweaty hair from a greasy forehead.

 

    They leave that night.

 

+

 

    Gabriel is the last of the four, and he takes to the skies as easily as Michael takes to the oceans.

 

    The youngest archangel is too playful for his own good, never realizes the extent to which Lucifer’s temper flares. Michael would try to warn him, but his Father merely watches as well, leaving the task to Raphael after Gabriel gets hit one too many times. Raphael says it in hushed words, wishes too quiet to hear from the shoreline as Michael dead man floats. Raphael runs a hand over bruises, over cuts, over scrapes, mutters the promise of something better, (Michael is reminded of worse times and worse wounds) and Gabriel lays his hand palm-up over the beginnings of growth and listens.

 

    Gabriel is a jokester, and doesn’t know when to stop, and sways at the edges of cliffs to feel the swell of air around him, but by their  _ Father  _ does he listen when his brothers speak.

 

+

 

    Lucifer steals a car and he drives.

 

    He thanks his vessel for retaining the muscle memory to do it, even while said muscles are deteriorating with the cosmic entity presently inhabiting them. But they retain it, and as Lucifer grips his hands around the wheel and shifts the car into drive, he can feel his nose beginning to bleed.

 

    Michael is slumped in the backseat, stolen hotel blankets draped over him.

 

    Lucifer is looking back at his brother while they’re parked at a gas station, and when he turns back to face the road, there is someone in the passenger seat. Lucifer jumps. 

 

    “Hey, idiot!”

 

    “What the  _ fuck _ , Gabe.”

 

    Gabriel grins at him, but he’s leaning away, pressed against the space between the seat and the door. “Just thought I’d check in on my two favorite brothers! What’s goin’ on, man?”

 

    Lucifer barely spares a glance at the backseat, but Gabriel follows the glance anyway.

 

    Gabriel looks to Michael, huddled in the backseat, and nods pensively. “He’s not lookin’ so good, huh? Did you get Raphael to try and wake him up?”

 

    “Huh,” Lucifer murmurs, “That would’ve made sense! Asking the Archangel of Healing himself.”

 

    Gabriel shifts in the passenger seat, looks between Lucifer and Michael for a moment. There’s a brief expression of almost genuine relief on his face, and then it’s gone, replaced with that same jilted grin. “No need to be so sarcastic, Luci.”

 

    Lucifer snorts and tightens his grip on the wheel.

 

+

 

    It’s just the four of them and their Father, for a while.

 

    Their Father takes Lucifer in his arms and cradles him until his tears stop. He guides Raphael with a hand over his and shows him how to make things better, and he creates something from nothing with Gabriel and then teaches him how to do it. And Michael?

 

    “Come along, Micah,” his Father murmurs, and so Michael does. They walk to the end of a patch of land, just before where the ground slopes into the ocean, and stand there.

 

    “This will be gone someday. It’ll wind up under the water,” he says, kneeling and patting the ground. It is cut into like strips where waves have already worn away chunks of rock, leaving a trail of smooth, vaguely wet steps downward.

 

    “Oh,” Michael responds, unsure of what he is being expected of, and his Father looks up at his oldest son and offers him a weary smile.

 

    “What would you like to see before that, Micah?”

 

    Michael isn’t certain of how to answer. He squints against the sun.

 

+

 

    When Lucifer pulls over to a gas station to refill the tank and steal a candy bar, Gabriel stays in the car.

 

    Lucifer stomps back, Milky Way clenched in fist (human food has an unfair tendency to taste  _ good _ ), and Gabriel is leaning towards the backseat, brow furrowed. Lucifer slams the driver’s door shut without bothering to ask, and then they’re tearing down the road again, and Lucifer wonders if Gabriel feels at home hurtling along a highway. 

 

    They’ve just passed an exit and Lucifer is chewing the last bite of the candy bar when Gabriel says, “He’s saying something.”

 

    Lucifer slams his foot against the brake. No pulling over. Nothing. He stops the car with a loud screech of tires against road, and wheels around in his seat. As the car’s whine dies, he can hear Michael murmuring.

 

    “Adam Milligan is dead,” he mutters, and then shivers and turns over to face the seat. “Adam- Adam Milligan is dead.”

 

    Lucifer and Gabriel are silent for a moment, the only sounds in the car the low hum of the engine and Michael’s jacket scraping against the seat. And then, at the same time:

 

    “He has no fucking clue where he is.”

 

    “Is Adam Milligan dead?”

 

    Lucifer looks up sharply at his younger brother, sees the almost-worry etched into his expression, and snorts. “Of course he’s dead,” Lucifer answers, and turns back around in his seat. He puts the car back into drive and presses on the acceleration, letting Gabriel work this over in his mind.

 

    “Do the Winchesters know?”

 

    “I don’t give a shit what they know or don’t know,” Lucifer snaps, and Gabriel sinks back in his seat. Lucifer is aware, even now, of how much the youngest archangel fears him. He  _ is  _ the Devil, after all. (But before that, too, huh? Even when they were new, young, fresh unto the void, the others feared him. Even  _ after _ , when they were returned, rebirthed, remade, they feared him. Lucifer, for all he is worth, is not sure what the feeling bubbling in his gut is. Disgust, probably. That’s most of his feelings these days,  _ probably _ .)

 

    Gabriel manages to shut up for a matter of thirty minutes, staring through the window and watching the landscape change, watching cities pass by, watching them cross over a bridge or two. “I felt bad for him.”

 

    Lucifer does not  _ do  _ consoling his younger siblings.

 

    “Adam, I mean.” Gabriel stops, as though considering what to say next (that’d be a first), and then merely drops his shoulders and resumes looking through the window. Michael, in the backseat, is still tossing and turning and shuddering and muttering  _ Adam Milligan is dead _ like it’s a prayer and he’s a sinner.

 

    Lucifer thinks about Adam Milligan, and then about Sam and Dean Winchester, and then about closing his eyes and letting go of the wheel and pressing harder on the acceleration. These thoughts, in Lucifer’s mind, make perfect sense together.

 

+

 

    Michael watches Lucifer make fire.

 

    He’s sitting between Raphael and Gabriel, Michael across from them, and his hands are working through the thin layer of moss that’s grown on the rockface. He closes his eyes, cups his hands, and exhales, and then he opens his eyes and uncups his hand and there’s  _ something  _ in his palms.

 

    Raphael makes a disapproving line out of his mouth (but his eyes are filled with a childlike wonder), Gabriel’s jaw drops into a perfect O (but he’s scared, the tense set of his shoulder makes this much obvious), and Lucifer is grinning ( _ just _ grinning). The light burning in his hand illuminates his face, casts shadows Michael has never seen the likes of before.

 

    He had never put it past his younger brother -- Lucifer was destined to do something remarkable from the moment their Father put him in the universe alongside he and Michael, from the instant he was revived on Earth with a slight gasp and a ready sun. Michael cares for him more than he could say,  _ but _ .

 

    But Michael watches Lucifer grin, and he is terrified.

 

+

 

    Lucifer could set the entire world on fire if he wanted.

 

    Without Michael, there’s no one who could reasonably stop him, not unless their Father decided to magically reappear (but then, Lucifer thinks, he kind of already  _ did _ , unless being lifted from the Cage and dropped in Arizona was someone else’s doing). Raphael could try, but he wouldn’t get anywhere, not really -- he’s a devastating force for Heaven, absolutely, but if Misters Saffir and Simpson would categorize Raphael as a four, Lucifer and Michael would be that legendary five (the difference, Lucifer thinks, is in  _ catastrophic damage will occur _ and  _ catastrophic damage will occur with increased severity _ ). And poor Gabriel, the youngest archangel, would not do anything, because he is flighty and scared and that is why he left Heaven and that is why he faked his own death.

 

    “Does Raphael know you’re alive?” Lucifer asks, though he already knows the answer.

 

    Gabriel draws in a sharp breath as soon as the words register to him. “No,” he admits in a low voice.

 

    Lucifer guesses that most angels, certainly Michael and Raphael, would probably tell Gabriel to return to Heaven, reintroduce himself to his siblings, become  _ holy  _ again. Lucifer, though?

 

    The Devil stays silent.

 

+

 

    The other angels come next, and they are brand-new, never seen before, birthed from the distant stars and comprised of jittery atoms and wavelengths.

 

    A host of them, hours apart, and Michael remembers every single one of them, he remembers their names, etches them into his mind and knows he will never forget a single one of them. Some stick out in particular ( _ Gadreel, Ishim, Anna, Akobel, Naomi, Metatron _ ), and others are just names he will have to work on attaching to faces. (And then there’s the youngest, Castiel. But his is not a story Michael will get to tell. Castiel will forge his own story and that is  _ all _ .)

 

    Their Father smiles at the new angels, equal parts fondly and sadly, and Michael’s gut wrings itself with a sudden fear. 

 

+

 

    Gabriel directs him to a hotel, and as Lucifer is parking the stolen car, Gabriel is checking out a room.

 

    He returns to the car, tosses Lucifer the room key, and Lucifer feels sick when it occurs to him how well the youngest archangel has fit in the human society. 

 

    “How do you stand it,” Lucifer murmurs as he’s opening the back door and shoving the sheets off Michael, presently curled with his head and knees pressing against the backseat. Gabriel looks up from where he’s leaning against the trunk.

 

    “What do you mean?” Gabriel pokes, and flips a coin in his palm for no clear reason other than to fidget. Lucifer huffs and climbs into the car to heave Michael to his feet.

 

    “Being around them.  _ Humans _ .” Lucifer spits out the last word into the dirt behind them, and when he manages to get Michael partially out of the car, he looks around at Gabriel. He’s brushing back a lock of hair, peering over at them and squinting ever-so-slightly.

 

    Instead of answering, Gabriel conjures a lollipop out of nowhere and nods at Michael. “What are you going to do about our dear brother?”

 

    What does  _ anyone _ expect from him when they ask that? “I’m gonna wait until he’s not fucking catatonic and finish the Apocalypse.”

 

    “You’re  _ still  _ on that?”

 

    He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he busies himself with making sure Michael doesn’t fall flat on his ass when Lucifer manages to get him upright. Gabriel chews on the end of the lollipop’s stick and watches. When Lucifer has finally managed to keep him standing, their younger brother sighs dramatically and leaves.

 

    “Fuck’s sake, Gabe.”

 

+

 

    “Come along, Micah,” their Father murmurs in the dead of the night, and Michael sits up in Heaven.

 

    The other angels are sleeping around them, not because they have to, but because they are still young in the universe and sleep feels better than other things. Lucifer, Raphael, and Gabriel are in the center of the room, and for a moment Michael wonders why he isn’t with them before remembering he’d chosen to stay near the edge of their haven.

 

    “Micah,” his Father repeats, and Michael looks around at him. He’s kneeling, staring around at the room with some kind of dejection.

 

    “Is something wrong, Father?” Michael replies in a hush, and his Father shakes his head, gestures at the Earth, offers Michael a hand. And then they’re on Earth, standing at the same point where the ground submits itself to the ocean that they’d stood on and watched not long ago. His Father sits, and Michael does, too, cautiously.

 

    “Do you remember when it was just you and I?”

 

    Michael fumbles for an answer. “Of course I do, Father, I--”

 

    “The first time around, Micah.”

 

    Oh. “Not well.”

 

    “Good, good,” his Father murmurs, and smooths back Michael’s hair from his forehead. “Try not to fight too much with your brothers in the coming millennia, Micah. They need you more than they readily admit.”

 

    “What’s going to happen?”

 

    “Nothing you need concern yourself with right now,” he answers softly, and his words are making Michael feel sleepy. So Michael rests his head in his Father’s lap, and there, with the waves lapping easily against the shore and his Father rubbing circles into his shoulder, the oldest son falls asleep.

 

+

 

    Lucifer has dragged Michael into the room and dropped him into one of the beds by the time Gabriel returns, Raphael in tow.

 

    Gabriel is still chewing on the lollipop, a sly grin to his face, and Raphael’s eyes are wide and shocked and he is shaking with fury while Lucifer is shaking his head.

 

    “I thought you died,” Raphael manages to say in a strangled voice, and then he drops into a sit in the middle of the room and buries his face in his palms. Gabriel shrugs and plops down beside him, easy, free, like this is something he does all the time. Lucifer guesses that he technically could relive every memory with the other archangels if he wanted to -- Gabriel had, for no clear reason, eternally been the most nostalgic of the four of them.

 

    The  _ four  _ of them.

 

    They’re in the  _ same room _ .

 

    The last time this happened, Lucifer wound up in the Cage, wailing for eternity with no one to hear but the ants.

 

+

 

    Things change.

 

    There start to be things in the ocean, and more plants, things that wither and die and create new things, an endless cycle. Life has dug its claws into the Earth’s surface and it will not let go, not until it is either good and ready to leave or the world meets it’s bright end. Whichever comes first.

 

    Michael inspects a blade of grass between his fingers, and though the younger angels don’t recognize it, will grow with the planet, the archangels are full of wonder.

 

+

 

    Raphael and Gabriel sit for a while, though Lucifer suspects they are probably communicating via some private angel radio channel, the kind Lucifer lost access to millennia ago. Lucifer himself is sitting with his legs crossed on the other bed, tapping restless fingers against the sheets and trying very hard not to succumb to his very base impulse and wreck the place. Finally, Raphael stands, looks at Michael, sitting up with his knees to his chest against the headboard and staring at the wall with those same hazy eyes.

 

    “We should see what it looks like,” Raphael murmurs, and Lucifer looks up sharply.

 

    “No fuckin’ way.”

 

    “You can’t expect me to do  _ anything  _ without knowing what he’s seeing,” Raphael argues in a low, dangerous voice. Lucifer wants to step forward, remind him he is talking to the fucking  _ Morning Star _ , but instead he narrows his eyes and wipes away blood gathering from a fresh wound on his cheek.

 

    “It’s worth a shot, Luci,” Gabriel says from his spot on the floor, unwilling to meet his older brother’s eyes.

 

    What Lucifer could say, as it is as close to the truth as he tends to get, is that he does not want to see the Cage again, not ever, certainly not from the perspective of the oldest archangel who’s wound up curled into a ball in a human hotel, staring at the wall because of it. He does not say this. Instead, he begrudgingly offers a wrist for Raphael to grab. Gabriel stands, places a hand on Raphael’s shoulder, and then Raphael taps his free hand against Michael’s forehead.

 

    The change in scenery is quick.

 

+

 

    The things in the oceans grow, grow until there are small creatures curving around Michael’s ankles when he wades in. Michael knows these will someday be fish. The word occurs to him easily, and he reaches down, feels them drift between his fingers.

 

    And the plants grow, too, grow and wither and die and decay and give way to new plants, and life follows, the promise of rebirth, of  _ betterment _ .

 

    Michael thinks, again, that life on Earth must be a cycle. He wonders what this means for the creatures in the water.

 

+

 

    They do not arrive in the Cage.

 

    In fact, they don’t arrive anywhere that is remotely  _ like  _ the Cage -- they show up on a shoreline of sand that must stretch for miles, and there’s Michael, floating on the surface of the water, wearing the same dusty clothing as in reality but in an entirely different vessel. His eyes are closed.

 

    “This is a waste of fucking time,” Lucifer calls, and Gabriel squints at the sea. Michael does not appear to register this yell. Raphael has taken a few steps away from them, standing quietly as though contemplating something.

 

    “Give it a sec,” Gabriel murmurs, and then the scene flickers. Only for a moment, and then the illusion is back, but it’s enough for them. Raphael turns to face them, brow furrowed.

 

    It flickers again, and now they’re somewhere else, someplace Lucifer wouldn’t ever  _ not  _ recognize.

 

    Sam’s not there, but there’s Michael, rocking back and forth in Adam Milligan’s skin.

 

    He’s crowded into a corner, clutching his knees to his chest, running a hand through his hair and humming something broken up beyond recognition in gasping intakes of breath.

 

    What the  _ fuck  _ is the Devil supposed to do?

 

    Raphael wheels about and takes a step towards Michael, as if to haul him out of his memories of the Cage on his own, ignoring Gabriel’s shout of, “Raph,  _ don’t _ \--”

 

    Lucifer ends up being the one to grab them both by the shoulder and drag them out.

 

+

 

    Things speed up, then.

 

    One moment Michael is standing at the water’s edge, and then he’s standing in a line beside Lucifer, the four archangels staring out at the congregation of their youngest siblings. They’re just in front of the throne, and the absence of a presence in it is obvious.

 

    “Where’s Father?” Lucifer asks in a quiet voice, too low for Raphael or Gabriel on his other side to hear, casting a momentary look at his older brother. He doesn’t appear truly worried, more curious than anything else. Michael feels the anxiety shifting in his own gut and wonders, for a moment, what it would be like to be Lucifer.

 

    Then Michael shakes his head, takes in a breath, and begins to address the angels of Heaven.

 

+

 

    Raphael turns on Lucifer as soon as he realizes they’re back in the hotel room, rounding on his older brother with a shaking fist and a grim expression, “We could’ve gotten him out, what were you  _ thinking _ \--”

 

    “I was thinking that  _ maybe  _ dragging him out of his own fucking head wouldn’t be the best way to go, what about  _ you _ , Raph?”

 

    Raphael is fuming. “Don’t call me that.”

 

    “I’ll do whatever the fuck I like, Raph--”

 

    “Stop it,” Gabriel murmurs, leaning against the wall and burying his hands into his pockets.

 

    “--Because  _ you  _ are in no position to be telling me to do  _ shit _ \--”

 

    “ _ Stop _ it,” Gabriel repeats more forcefully, and they both ignore him in favor of drawing their hands into fists and preparing to take out this hotel room, and, if need be, the entire hotel.

 

    “--Especially not when, ‘ _ Don’t screw with Lucifer, _ ’ should be engraved into your fucking grace, lest you’ve forgotten--”

 

    “Stop it!” Gabriel shouts, and Raphael turns towards him with a sneer.

 

    “This doesn’t concern you, Gabriel,” he says, and Lucifer has to squint against a sudden stream of blood running into his eye from some patch of skin on his forehead.

 

    Gabriel hums, perhaps to say something else, but then he merely shakes his head as if disappointed, and then he’s gone.

 

    “Good fuckin’ job,” Lucifer mutters, and any fight evaporates from Raphael’s shoulders. He doesn’t glance again at Lucifer. Instead, the Archangel of Healing casts a tired look back at Michael, and sits down on the edge of the bed, dropping his face into his palms.

 

    It’s a sad sight.

 

    They’re silent for a moment, during which Lucifer notices that another patch on his chin has begun bleeding, and with a quiet, “Shit,” he dabs at the wounds.

 

    Raphael looks over and says, “Your vessel is dying.”

 

    Lucifer waves a hand. 

 

    “It appears to be getting worse.”

 

    “Spare me.”

 

    “Humans are dumb,” Raphael comments idly, and Lucifer almost laughs. It’s weird to hear him use the word  _ dumb _ . Lucifer guesses a lot more has changed than he thought.

 

    “Tell that to dear old Dad,” he croons instead, “See what happens.”

 

    Raphael almost laughs too. But this almost-laugh is a desperate kind of almost-laugh, an almost-laugh where you’re not sure if it’s even a joke or not. And they’re quiet again, revelling in that kind of odd wonder where neither is sure how they got here. “Why not come back to Heaven, brother?” Raphael murmurs, throat catching on the last word, like he’s unused to saying it again.

 

   Lucifer snorts and wonders when exactly in the past thousands of years Raphael got so good at telling jokes.

 

+

 

    Their Father’s visits to Heaven occur less and less.

 

    Michael seems to feel the decline most, as he himself would have expected, and he ponders about it in hushed words to Lucifer. Lucifer shrugs, continues staring at the fish in the ocean with that same wide-eyed wonder that Michael had had. 

 

    One of the young angels approaches the two of them, perhaps to ask a question, and Michael waves them away with a hand. “I wish he would at least tell  _ us  _ where he is,” Michael murmurs, and Lucifer shrugs again.

 

    “He’ll come back. You said so,” Lucifer reminds him, and then he steps away from the water’s edge as the waves begin to lap against his feet. He pouts for a moment, and then sighs and looks up at Michael. “C’mon, big bro,” he says, beginning to walk away. Michael pauses before following, catching up to his younger brother with a newfound speed to his step.

 

    (Later, Michael will wonder if what happens is his fault.)

 

+

 

    Raphael leaves, leaves with a flutter of angel wings and a hushed promise to find Gabriel. Lucifer cannot recall how many times one of them has promised that and failed. Gabriel, when he wants to, can disappear as easily as the breeze.

 

    Immediately, Lucifer turns to face Michael, and he wants so badly to yell. To yell and kick and scream and throw a tantrum of epic proportions, to destroy half the planet now and the other half when Michael finally breaks out of this. Then Lucifer realizes that Michael might not  _ ever  _ break out of this, and he sinks into the other bed’s mattress. He breathes out, stares at the ceiling, and wonders how to get his vessel to stop rotting.

 

    He’ll probably have to get a new one. His Father knows Sam Winchester will never say yes again, is probably too far gone to do anything (but then, Sam  _ had  _ been sturdier than Michael), but Lucifer will have to -- this one is peeling, falling apart. Like a rotten apple, Lucifer thinks.

 

    (There’ve been a few of those, as far as he’s concerned.)

 

    Lucifer wants to use up the rest of his grace, leave Nick as nothing but a charred shell, right then and there. In one grand swoop, use up whatever this vessel can still stand and then some. In his earlier days, he would’ve found it easy to come up with a million different ways to do this; set half the land on Earth on fire, blow apart one of the younger angels and reconstruct them entirely, get into a real, honest to their Father fight with one of his brothers. It would’ve been so easy. Lucifer doesn’t think that he would’ve hesitated a moment to do any of it, just to prove he could, just to prove that his Father’s  _ real  _ greatest creation could come back from it.

 

    Now, though? Now, Lucifer taps his nails against his knees and asks himself when he changed.

 

+

 

    The younger angels are separated into groups.

 

    Gabriel’s takes to him the fastest, the obvious leader of the bunch the angel Anna, who beams up at the oldest four angels and directs the others with firm gestures and gentle words. Michael can tell, even now, that Balthazar might prove a problem in the future -- there’s a degree of flightiness that he picks up from Gabriel, a degree that nearly puts him and the youngest archangel on the same level.

 

    Raphael’s bunch is smaller but unfailingly loyal. There’s Joshua, who enjoys the plants on Earth and tending to them as much, if not more so, than the Archangel of Healing himself. On good days, Michael will find the two of them sitting side-by-side in a field, Joshua wide-eyed as Raphael recounts the stories from before the Earth (mostly, Michael is surprised he remembers. Michael doesn’t. He doesn’t know if he wants to). On bad days, Joshua will retreat into the recesses of Heaven, and Raphael will watch Metatron carve into bare rock as though it could mean something.

 

    Lucifer finds himself with Gadreel and Uriel and angels Michael will barely speak personally to, and while Gadreel is wary (as he should be, Lucifer will add hastily to Gabriel and Michael like it’s something he has to say, but as much as Lucifer pretends to revel in the angels’ fear, he hates the fact that  _ he  _ is the one archangel to be scared of), Uriel takes to him like a dog to a bone. He admires Lucifer, really. It’s a relief,  _ really _ .

 

    And then there’s Michael’s bunch.

 

    Zachariah and Naomi stand out most, each with wolfish grins and an active desire to live up to the eldest son’s expectations. Michael takes one look at their constant smiles and wonders where on Earth they learned it from. (He knows. Of course he knows.) But he’s also painfully aware that they’ll grow into some of Heaven’s finest, endlessly dedicated to the cause, and Michael’s task is to rear the best soldiers. And so he does.

 

    And their Father’s seat in Heaven remains vacant.

 

+

 

    Gabriel returns of his own accord.

 

    He sits down on the bed behind Lucifer, gives his brother a pat on the shoulder, and pretends not to see the blood Lucifer’s vessel has left on the sheets. Lucifer is grateful for this.

 

    “Do you miss Heaven?” Lucifer asks. He’s not sure what brings it on. Gabriel pops some kind of sweet into his mouth and shuffles his feet.

 

    “Dunno,” he answers, glancing back at Lucifer. He’s squinting slightly, wearing a lopsided kind of grin, looking almost contemplative. He reminds Lucifer of their Father in that regard. “Do you?”

 

    Lucifer has to think for a moment. When he finds that he dislikes every answer he comes up with, he merely shrugs. It’s a human gesture. He’s been picking up more and more of those.

 

+

 

    One day, Michael returns to Heaven to find Metatron carving into the floors.

 

   Michael remembers how laboriously their Father had pored over Heaven, how many times he’d taken it all apart to reshape and remake it, and Michael nearly panics. Then he remember who he is, and he kneels beside the younger angel and tries to not show the worsening anxiety in his gut. “Metatron, why don’t we find something else to carve into, hm?” he asks, gently patting him on the shoulder, and although he must’ve heard Michael approach, Metatron looks up like he’s seeing the sun for the first time.

 

    “Micah,” Metatron mutters, and throws his arms around Michael’s shoulders. Michael is mostly troubled to hear the nickname from anyone who isn’t his Father and to be hugged by anyone who isn’t one of the fellow archangels, but he picks up Metatron like a child regardless and carries him to Earth, where Metatron sits and stares distastefully at the rocks but begins to scratch hastily into them anyway.

 

    Michael watches him and realizes he is working out a  _ system _ .

 

+

 

    Raphael comes back, because of course he does, and he sees Gabriel and mutters something like an apology.

 

    Gabriel shrugs it off. “It’s whatever,” he murmurs, and Lucifer can practically feel Raphael and Gabriel watching him. Perhaps he should’ve said something to that effect, should’ve apologized, but his Father never apologized for chucking him in a fucking cage for a couple years, so why bother? It feels petty. (And then there’s the fact that Gabriel is going to have to get used to fighting again once Michael is back, Lucifer reminds himself helpfully. There’s still an apocalypse to play out, mind you.)

 

    “I spoke to Joshua,” Raphael tells them cautiously, sinking into the hotel chair across the room.

 

    “Like, the gardener?” Lucifer has trouble remembering some of them. Sue him. Who cares if he can’t place every one of his siblings by name alone?

 

    “Like our Father’s one direct contact to us since…” Raphael trails off, though he nods reluctantly at Lucifer. “The only angel to claim to still speak to him.”

 

    “Emphasis on  _ claim _ ,” Gabriel murmurs, and Raphael looks genuinely upset for all of a second.

 

    “Shut up,” Lucifer snaps, and Gabriel seems torn between shrinking away and straightening himself out. “Go on, Raph.”

 

    “He said that in order to repair an angel whose grace has been--” Raphael pauses to swallow and gesture at Michael. “Obliterated.” His word choice is careful. “One would have to bring the angel back to Heaven, where Heaven’s restorative power and healers can mend it to the best of their ability.”

 

    “We’ve got Heaven’s chosen healer right here,” Lucifer mutters.

 

    “So we gotta go back home?” Home.  _ Home _ . As if home were something that still existed for he and Lucifer. As if Gabriel didn’t run away and Lucifer wasn’t kicked out. As if it was ever home for any of them.

 

    “According to what our Father told Joshua, yes.”

 

    Gabriel, who’d moments ago been skeptical, looks almost hopeful. Lucifer wonders if he’s been looking for a reason to go back, and then wonders lots of other things.

 

    Raphael breathes out, and turns to look at Lucifer. His expression is set. “I understand if you don’t wish to accompany us, brother. But Heaven needs Michael back.” And then Raphael sucks in his lower lip to chew on it for a moment. All at once, it strikes Lucifer that when the Apocalypse began, the angels became more human than ever before (if Michael were there in mind as well as body, he might think it was a perfect circle). Before Lucifer can really let this action soak in, Raphael goes on, “Gabriel, too. And you, if you’ll have it. It’d be…  _ nice  _ to have the four of us back.”

 

    Lucifer’s mind is made up too quickly for his own liking.

 

+

 

    Their Father comes back, sometimes.

 

    The first time, he takes Gabriel aside, and murmurs words that Michael will never hear. Gabriel nods, eagerly, eyes wide and hopeful and scared all at once. His shoulders are tense, set into a cautious line as he listens. Michael wonders what their Father is telling him, and then Hester is anxiously pulling at his clothing to get his attention.

 

    Michael does not remember exactly what she says. It’s something about Lucifer and metal, and when Michael follows her, Lucifer is wielding the very first blade. His hands are bleeding, and Raphael gives Michael a fearful look from where he is kneeling at his older brother’s side.

 

    Virgil approaches them, and when Raphael carelessly deposits the weapon into his hands, he studies it with a kind of admiration Michael can’t imagine most angels recreating.

 

+

 

    Raphael sends a message via angel radio to some angel within Heaven, and when she allows them reentry, every living angel feels it.

 

    Heaven’s most loyal and bravest show up immediately, Virgil and Ezekiel and Ambriel and Hannah and Samandriel and so many others that Lucifer loses track of. But he knows why, he knows why only the bravest show up and why they show up instantaneously -- Uriel had told him that since his fall, the rule two archangels is to be expected, three archangels is a miracle, and four archangels is danger had been ingrained in their heads. 

 

    So Heaven’s bravest show up, angel blades waiting in ready hands and expressions set, and then they see the procession. 

 

    Raphael stands at the front, calming them with a hand held in the air. Gabriel is to his left, looking uncomfortable surrounded by throngs of his siblings, and then there’s Lucifer and Michael.

 

    In order to make the journey easier, he’d thrown Michael over his shoulder haphazardly, carrying him the way a soldier might carry a wounded fellow out of battle. (And, really, isn’t that their situation?) And the angels of Heaven are staring, and although they are the bravest, they are still scared. Lucifer can feel it. They don’t know what’s going on.

 

    “Send out the command to return to Heaven,” Raphael murmurs to Gabriel, because for all of his worries about not being a decent leader, Raphael knows what to do.

 

+

 

    The next time, their Father takes Raphael gently by the shoulder, and they kneel in front of Heaven’s throne (one, just one, a seat reserved for their Father, created by him, never used by him). He murmurs words Michael can’t understand, hands folded neatly in his lap, and Raphael mimics the motion. Michael wants to stay, but Hannah comes to stand at his side with news of something new on Earth, and Michael goes to see.

 

    There is a fish crawling on the shoreline.

 

    “Don’t step on that fish, Castiel,” Gabriel says in hushed words to a younger angel standing at his side, “Big plans for that fish.”

 

+

 

    The youngest archangel sends the command out on whatever station every angel but Lucifer is tuned into, and immediately, more show up. Lucifer recognizes Gadreel instantly, and then Metatron is there, and so is Malachi, Hael, Bartholomew, and even Joshua appears from Heaven’s Garden.

 

     Balthazar and Anna arrive, too, landing right between Naomi and Ambriel, and when Virgil looks up and sees Balthazar, there is a renewed tension. But there are archangels, four of them, standing just inside of Heaven’s Gates, and there is no way in  _ Hell  _ (get it?) that they’d fight right now.

 

    More and more angels show up, crowding the space and choking it, but they provide a clear path to where their Father would sit. Lucifer eyes it, sees it’s still exactly the way it was when he fell, and wonders if Michael and Raphael ever worked up the courage to claim it.

 

     Finally, there’s one last soldier of Heaven unaccounted for, and when he arrives, he brings with him two others.

 

+

 

    The next time their Father arrives, he takes aside Lucifer.

 

    They disappear into some cave in a cliffside, lit only by a flame Lucifer contains in his palm, and when his younger brother looks back to see Michael wavering at the entrance, Lucifer gives him a smile and waves a hand and says, “C’mon, big bro.”

 

    So Michael leaves. He takes a seat near Heaven’s entrance beside Anna.

 

    “Why do you think the world is changing?” Anna asks, and from here, Michael can see she is watching something small and scaled scurry by. 

 

    “Things have to change sometimes,” Michael tells her, and she nods contemplatively. He is brought back to the universe before planets, before stars, before the first war, and finds that he likes this change. He likes the galaxies, the solar systems, and he  _ likes  _ Earth.

 

    “I wonder what it’ll be like when it stops changing,” she hums, and although Michael knows that things typically do not just  _ stop  _ changing, he wonders, too.

 

+

 

    Castiel, the youngest angel, arrives with the Winchester brothers in tow, and when Sam sees Lucifer and Gabriel he freezes. He doesn’t remember the Cage, probably had his memory wiped by Castiel or some higher-up. And yet he is still cautious, still wary, still retains the imprint of the Cage. This, in Lucifer’s mind, is a good thing.

 

    “Humans,” Raphael begins slowly, looking over Dean and Sam, “Are not permitted here, Castiel.”

 

    “I was not going to make them wait for news of what would happen after you bring the Devil back into Heaven.”

 

    “Aw, Cassie, I thought you’d have a higher opinion of me than  _ that _ ,” Lucifer croons, although he is clenching his free hand into a fist at his side. He has not forgotten the molotov that temporarily banished his brother. Gabriel is shrinking away beside him, gaze flitting between Castiel and Lucifer, clearly ready to flee at any moment.

 

    Rather than answering, Castiel takes an aggressive step nearer as if to fight, but then Dean’s hand finds his upper arm and pulls him back. It’s a gentle gesture, nothing forceful, but it’s effective. He falls in between the Winchesters, not bothering to mask his glare as he says through gritted teeth, “I know what you did in Hell, and so will Michael, and if you think that waking him up is going to make him forgive you for it, you’re mistaken.”

 

   Lucifer is tempted to do something rash, but the forces of Heaven are looking at him, and so are Raphael and Gabriel, watching him cautiously to make sure he doesn’t do anything.

 

    And all at once, he gets it: he can be accepted back into his brothers’ ranks, but he will  _ not  _ be considered an angel of Heaven again. 

 

+

 

    Time and time again, their Father returns, along with some new development in life on Earth, and he’ll take aside Gabriel or Raphael or Lucifer and tell them things Michael will never hear.

 

    Michael grows to be okay with this. He takes to avoiding his Father entirely when he hears through the younger angels that he’s arrived, instead settling down beside the open ocean and watching the waves hit the shore. There are things other than angels around now, and he feels at home among them, laying down in the sand with his arms guarding his eyes and feeling the sun beat down onto everything.

 

    The angels leave him alone in these times, feeling as though approaching the soldier in this stupor will result in nothing good. Michael does nothing to reverse this image. He’d rather be left alone, anyhow.

 

+

 

    “Castiel, fall in line,” Raphael instructs after the tension has grown thick enough to be cut with a knife, and so Castiel does. 

 

    He takes another step into the swarm of angels with Dean and Sam at his sides, who are peering over his shoulders at each other, exchanging something only siblings can convey with looks alone. He still glares after Lucifer as Raphael leads the way to their Father’s seat, and every angel takes a step back as they approach, parting perfectly to allow the four of them through. From either side of the path, higher-ranked angels move forward, ready to assume their usual positions near the front of the space. 

 

    When they reach the supposed throne of Heaven, Raphael begins to the side, as if to lead them to a separate room, but Lucifer merely deposits Michael in their Father’s place. The significance of this fails to fall upon Gabriel, but the realization sweeps every other angel like a wave. Even Raphael startles in momentary alarm, and then exhales and sets his shoulders firmly. Michael sinks into the seat easily, eyes unfocused as he slumps down, hands settled in his lap. Raphael slinks behind the throne and settles his hands on Michael’s shoulders as Gabriel takes a place at the side opposite Lucifer, and then Raphael casts a glance at someone in the congregation of angels before them.

 

    Joshua, the only angel who speaks to their Father, nods encouragingly, and so the Archangel of Healing starts.

 

+

 

    Life grows and grows on Earth.

 

    And then their Father comes back again, and Michael has disappeared to the shoreline, and his Father settles down beside him.

 

    “I’m sorry I’m not around as much as I used to be,” his Father starts, and Michael feels dizzy, “And I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you when I am. There’s a lot to be done in this universe, Micah, and I need you and your brothers here.”

 

     “Okay,” Michael says, because everything else that he wants to say is getting caught in his throat.

 

    “It’s not going to be easy.”

 

    “Wh--”

 

    “None of it will be, but you need to do it. You’re going to have to.”

 

    “Do  _ what _ , Father--”

 

    “Now,” he interrupts, and Michael’s frustration, which has been bubbling and boiling and threatening to spill over in the pit of his stomach for _ so long _ , is stifled instantly by his disappointment. “Come along, Micah,” his Father says, and then he stands, and Michael follows suit.

 

+

 

    The process is long.

 

    Lucifer and Gabriel can acutely feel Michael’s grace being rearranged, strung back together like a patchwork quilt, haphazardly without care of what goes where. Raphael’s jaw is tense as he works, vessel still but hard at work.

 

    (At one point, Lucifer can hear Dean mutter, “What the  _ fuck  _ is--” only to be cut off by Sam shushing him with a hiss.)

 

    There are several moments in which Raphael can feel something go wrong, and Michael’s head will drop to the back of their Father’s throne, all empty movements and blank gestures. Raphael will step back wearily and shoot either Lucifer or Gabriel a dark look, at which point they will nudge him with an elbow back to it, and he’ll settle back down.

 

    And then Raphael puts the last two pieces back together, and it is as if Michael is a puzzle with the pieces shoved wherever they fit regardless of what’s on the piece. There are fissures and wrinkles where there shouldn’t be, and Raphael clearly knows this as he drops his hands to his sides and steps away with a sharp intake of breath. Gabriel seems at a loss for words, too, though he gives his older brothers a hopeful sort of smirk as he moves back. Lucifer is the only one who remains just beside the seat, squinting at Michael for any sign of awareness.

 

    Heaven waits for their general to return.

 

+

 

    His Father leads him back to Heaven, back to a central space devoid of angels.

 

    Michael looks around at it and is at a loss.

 

    “This’ll be blood-stained someday,” his Father murmurs, stepping forward. He pats where Metatron carved into the floor and smiles, for although the indentations are gone, long since fixed by Michael, he must be able to sense what was once there.

 

    “I don’t want it to be.”

 

    His Father nods. “I wouldn’t expect you to want it, Micah. But it’ll happen, and you must prepare yourself and the other angels.”

 

    Michael understands, of course he does, why wouldn’t he?

 

    “It has to be you.”

 

    Michael doesn’t get it and he never has.

 

    “You remember how to fight?”

 

    “Of course I do,” Michael scrambles to say, because it’s like that has been written in his grace from the day he came back. He’s a born soldier, forged from nothing to lead, and he knows it. Now, Michael realizes he has never doubted it.

 

    “Good,” his Father says, and then he’s gone.

 

+

 

    When Michael leans forward, Lucifer almost expects him to vomit again.

 

    Instead, this sudden shift is more like a gasp of fresh air after resurfacing from underwater, when your lungs have been battling with a lack of oxygen and then you break the surface of the ocean and breathe in. It’s a coming to, and so it is then perhaps the only meaningful coming to Lucifer will ever witness.

 

    Michael leans forward and coughs, coughs hard, coughs like he’s never coughed before, and then he grabs the edge of the armrest and coughs some more. It is not pretty, but it is not pathetic, and that is all Lucifer has asked for.

 

    As the eldest son of God raises his head and sees Heaven’s forces assembled before him, they kneel. They drop to their knees, waves at a time, until it’s three quarters of the archangels, Balthazar wavering uncertainly, Anna with her arms firmly crossed, and the fucking guardians of free will themselves still standing upright.

 

    The Devil can’t help but throw his head back and laugh.

 

+

 

    Michael talks to the first human.

 

    He talks to the first human, and in everything they do, Michael understands the future of the planet, understands the future of Heaven, understands the future of the universe and its eventual collapse. He understands all of it, and it is awful and wonderful at the same time.

 

    And so Michael smooths back the scruffy, unkempt hair of the first human from their grimy forehead, and hums, “Come on, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed, thanks much for reading!


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